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Introduction to Patents Information edited by Stephen Van Dulken, British
Library, pp 126, £25.

International Guide to Official Industrial Property Publications by
Brenda Rimmer, edited and updated by Stephen Van Dulken, British Library,
pp 200, £45.

Innovation and Sovereignty: The Patent Debate in African Development
edited by Calestous Juma and Jackton Ojwang, African Centre for Technology
Studies, Nairobi, Kenya, pp 252, £10.50.

Biopoly International: Intellectual Property, Biotechnology and Trade
by Rohini Acharya, African Centre for Technology Studies, pp 27 Dollar 7.50.

Why should anyone use the million patent documents published each year
as a source of information, asks Stephen Van Dulken rhetorically in his
Introduction to Patents Information. It is because the publication of a
patent is often the first time the information is published, because 85
per cent of the information in patents is never published anywhere else,
and because the text is by law translated into several languages. A patent
specification must also give considerable detail on how an invention works.

But searching for patents is an impossible task without experience or
help. The searcher needs to know what indexes exist, and how different technologies
are classified. The staff in major libraries, such as the British Library’s
Science Reference and Information Service in Southampton Buildings, London
(once the Patent Office Library), are skilled and helpful for the most
part. Smaller libraries and foreign libraries may be unwilling or unable
to help visitors.

One solution is to pay a professional searcher to hunt for patents,
but this can be very expensive. An alternative is to buy or borrow some
guide books and these two from the British Library are almost certainly
the best available. Both are new and updated editions of previous publications,
and they now advise on recent developments in computer searching, either
by CD-ROM or with online databases. They deal with international patenting
schemes, such as the European Patent Convention and World Patent Cooperation
Treaty, and explain all a searcher needs to know about patent publications
in Britain, the US, Germany and Japan. Neither is intended to help an inventor
file a patent.

So what is the difference, other than price and size? The International
Guide covers the countries not dealt with in Introduction to Patents Information.
It includes useful new information on the People’s Republic of China, the
former Soviet Union and the rest of the old Eastern bloc. It is tightly
packed, and also includes trademark and design registrations. The Introduction
gives more detail on computer-based search opportunities. It also has larger
pages and is a touch more readable.

Despite the inevitable overlap, most libraries will not need to choose.
They will simply buy both books. Individuals should buy the Introduction
if they are new to searching, and the International Guide if they are experienced.

I am sorry to say the crisp and factual layout of these two books from
the British Library stands in contrast with the two books from the ACTS.
Innovation and Sovereignty is really just a collection of essays on patent
protection, with the common thread in its final paragraph: ‘Any African
nation that does not take the role of science and technology development
seriously has a death wish.’ Few would argue with the sentiment, but putting
the worthy thoughts of the contributors into practice is clearly low on
the various governments’ priorities.

I cannot see how this rather rambling book of overlapping essays will
accelerate change. There are some useful facts, such as the different types
of patent schemes working across Africa, but the book’s generally unstructured
approach undermines its value as a reference source. Except for some information
about wood stoves, there is also an irritating lack of hard fact examples
to back up points made about unprotected or under-exploited inventions.

Although Biopolicy International is written by one author, and is a
single chapter book, it bundles together a lot of loosely related ideas
on patent protection and the role of governments, especially the US government,
in controlling trade. To state simply that ‘technology spillovers over
the years have resulted in a considerable amount of technological knowledge
being available within the public domain’, and then refer only vaguely to
‘techniques such as tissue cultures which . . . were never patented’,
without giving even one example, hardly makes a persuasive argument. It
is also frustrating to read that ‘scientists in Cambridge, England . . .
filed for a patent on monoclonal antibodies but received no response and
went ahead and published their results’, without any further explanation,
names and dates. With the best will in the world I can only guess at why
these two books were published and who will get genuine benefit from reading
them.